Kathryn Libal

Humanitarian Alliances: Local and International NGO Partnerships and the Iraqi Refugee Crisis

This article examines collaborations between international and local NGOs serving Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Refugee displacement, while fraught with challenges, also presents opportunities to support Jordanian civil society and the state social safety net. Such developments potentially benefit not only Iraqi refugees, but also low-income Jordanians. Barriers to international NGO involvement in Jordan have led to a collaborative model of humanitarian assistance, utilizing ties with local organizations to build programs and direct resources and services to Iraqis. The article is based on field research and interviews with representatives from the majority of international NGO in Jordan, Syria, and the United States. The authors find that while humanitarian cooperation in addressing Iraqi forced migration is important, the complexity of this crisis has limited their work. Without support from the international community and the United States for deepening such alliances, Iraqi refugees will remain vulnerable for years to come.

Human rights in the United States : beyond exceptionalism

Foreword: are Americans human? Reflections on the future of progressive politics in the United States Dorothy Q. Thomas 1. Paradoxes and possibilities: domestic human rights policy in context Kathryn Libal and Shareen Hertel Part I. Structuring Debates, Institutionalizing Rights: 2. The yellow sweatshirt: human dignity and economic human rights in advanced industrialized democracies Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann 3. The welfare state: a battleground for human rights Mimi Abramovitz 4. Drawing lines in the sand: building economic and social rights in the United States Cathy Albisa 5. State and local commissions as sites for domestic human rights implementation Risa Kaufman Part II. Challenging Public/Private Divides: 6. The curious resistance to seeing domestic violence as a human rights violation in the United States Sally Engle Merry and Jessica Shimmin 7. At the crossroads: childrens rights and the US government Jonathan Todres 8. Entrenched inequity: healthcare in the United States Jean Connolly Carmalt, Sarah Zaidi and Alicia Ely Yamin 9. Business and human rights: a new approach to advancing environmental justice in the United States Joanne Bauer Part III. From the Margins to the Center: Making Harms Visible through Human Rights Framing: 10. The law and politics of US participation in the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities Michael Ashley Stein and Janet E. Lord 11. The anomaly of citizenship for indigenous rights Bethany R. Berger 12. Human rights violations as obstacles to escaping poverty: the case of lone mother-headed families Ken Neubeck 13. The human rights of children in conflict with the law: lessons for the US human rights movement Mie Lewis 14. LGBT rights as human rights in the United States: opportunities lost Julie Mertus 15. No shelter: disaster politics in Louisiana and the struggle for human rights Davida Finger and Rachel E. Luft.

Staging Turkish Women's Emancipation: Istanbul, 1935

This article examines debates over Turkish womens emancipation and womens independent organizing in Turkey during the 1930s. It traces the troubled history of Turkeys most prominent independent womens organization, the Turkish Womens Union (Türk Kadın Birliği), focusing especially on the Twelfth Congress of the International Alliance of Women (IAW) held in Istanbul in 1935. Despite the renown of the Womens Union, it was forced to disband shortly after the Istanbul Congress. Drawing upon popular press accounts, official records of the Istanbul Congress, and correspondence between the Womens Union and IAW members, this analysis underscores how deeply contested the question of womens emancipation was, not only within urban elite society, but also among those in municipal and state office. It also provides insights into how actively Turkish feminists engaged questions of peace, disarmament, and Turkeys role in geopolitics, challenging the view that women were best suited to contribute to social and family policies rather than foreign policy.

Human Rights in the United States: Paradoxes and Possibilities: Domestic Human Rights Policy in Context

The United States of America was founded on the principle of equality through law, even if this ideal has not always been realized. Indeed, the struggle to realize equality and full participation in society and governance is a perennial theme in U.S. history. At various junctures, realizing this ideal has been challenging, especially in the face of war, economic crises, or social unrest. Nowhere is this more evident than today, when growing opposition (both at the grassroots level and among political elites) to “big government” and “judicial activism” threatens to significantly limit the capacity of the state to address discrimination and social inequality. This opposition has sharpened in the wake of economic recession, heightened national security concerns, and rising nativism. Human rights could provide a useful tool for addressing these challenges. Human rights are grounded in the notion of human dignity, and they obligate the state to assure the protection and provision of a full range of political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights. Why, then, are human rights not central to discussions of public policy and legal reform in the United States? After all, the United States played an instrumental role both in founding the modern human rights regime in the immediate aftermath of World War II and in championing human rights as a foreign policy priority at various junctures over the ensuing six decades. Yet many politicians, civil servants, members of the judiciary, academics, and pundits have long insisted that international human rights norms do not apply (or apply in only a limited manner) to the crafting, implementation, or evaluation of U.S. domestic laws and public policy. American citizens have tended instead to frame their grievances over

Human Rights in the Practice of Family Therapy: Domestic Violence, a Case in Point

In this article the authors introduce a human rights framework into the practice of family therapy. In particular, the authors explore the relevance of human rights to the practice of liberation-based work, arguing for situating individual experience within collective human rights discourse; drawing from human rights movements to promote resistance and resilience; and using a human rights framework to promote restorative justice and accountability. Domestic violence is offered as a case in point.

Nurses on health care governing boards: An integrative review

BACKGROUND Nurses are key change agents in health care; yet, nurses have not been sufficiently engaged on boards to shape decision making. Without an equal voice in the boardroom, nurses cannot fulfill their professional obligation to society. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to understand the progression in research focus and recommendations over time about nurses on boards (NOB), identify research gaps, and make research/practice recommendations. METHODS An integrative review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (2009) for data evaluation and analysis. Eleven studies (six quantitative, three qualitative, and two quasi-mixed methods) were included in the review. FINDINGS The focus/recommendations of research about NOB have changed from passive observation to action-oriented inquiry that considers nurse expertise and value but lacks a coordinated approach to advance board appointments for nurses. CONCLUSION A systematic approach to the research is needed to advance NOB as key agents in health care transformation and social justice.

Introduction: The Gender of Humanitarian Narrative

It all begins with telling someone else’s story and the dilemmas with which that telling may burden the teller. The novelist Nuruddin Farah recounts how, when he was a child in Somalia, illiterate adults would ask him to write letters for them in exchange for a small ‘‘tip.’’ One day a man came to him and asked him to write a letter to his wife, who had been absent for some time from the man’s home. As Farah tells the story, ‘‘He says, what I want you to do . . . is to tell her in this letter, she’s been away far too long. I want her back. And I will give her three months. If she does not come—tell her in the letter, and make sure you tell her this—if she doesn’t come back, I’m going to go to the place where she is, break every single bone in her, drag her all the way back to where we are standing now.’’ Farah continues, ‘‘Instead of writing, ‘If you don’t come back, I’m going to break your legs, drag you all the way back here,’ I wrote down, ‘If you don’t come back within three months, you will consider yourself divorced.’ ’’ The woman, after receiving the letter and having it read to her, took the letter to a judge, who declared her and her husband to be divorced. Six months later, the man went to where his wife was and found she was already married to another man. In the end, the man ‘‘came back, spoke with my family, and I was instructed never ever to write anything for anyone again.’’1 The story, though told with a puckish sense of the absurd, raises the serious question of the extent and the limits of the writer’s power: writing other people’s words shapes outcomes in those others’ lives, but in ways the writer cannot fully predict. Just what the boy Farah thought he was doing is not clear. (Was he trying to spare the woman a beating and the humiliation of being dragged back home? Or just shielding her from being hurt by her husband’s brutal words?) But he ended up, for better or worse, precipitating her divorce. The power of writing to intervene in real events here intersects the author’s inability to control what that power does, once it is released into the world as text; an awareness of that power and its limits calls for sober recognition of responsibility toward those people whose stories we bring into writing. For us, the editors of this dossier, Farah’s words also raise two other sets of questions, one about reporters’ responsibilities generally and the other about the gendered dimensions of human diversity. First, how are our responsibilities as authors of human rights and humanitarian representations to be made concrete and palpable if, unlike the boy Farah, our words are unlikely ever to be answered by a person whose future our words have affected, and if there is no one to forbid us from writing again if we get the story wrong? When we convert what we know about a complicated and unpredictable world into forms that we think our audiences will easily assimilate, are we to be held accountable for shaping their knowledge and hence affecting their ability to make an ethical response?

Social Work With Migrants and Refugees

This special issue of Advances in Social Work focuses on current challenges and best practices with migrants and refugees, in an increasingly difficult global context. Over the past decade, forced migration and displacement reached record numbers, while complex geopolitical, economic, and environmental factors contributed to escalating current challenges. International human rights and migration laws provide a framework too narrow and too limited for these recent developments. Political pressure and a growing identity crisis add to the xenophobia and climate of fear, in which security has in some cases become the primary rationale underpinning rapidly changing migration policies. Social work as a profession – in education and practice – has an important (if largely unfulfilled) role to play in advancing the human rights of migrants and refugees. In this commentary, we outline the macro contexts that shape social work practice with migrants and refugees, highlighting the great potential for social work to do much more to advance the rights and interests of those fleeing conflict, economic or natural disasters, or other upheavals.

The rationale for nurses on boards in the voices of nurses who serve

BACKGROUND Inclusion of nurses on boards (NOB) to enhance health care transformation is recommended; however, there is no research-based rationale for NOB. PURPOSE To articulate the rationale for NOB in the voices of nurses who serve. METHODS An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used with priority on the quantitative strand (Delphi method). The qualitative strand was accomplished with focus groups. FINDINGS Twenty-nine NOB participants (Delphi phase) and nine NOB participants (focus groups) agreed the rationale for NOB is embedded in specific knowledge, skills, and perspectives that nurses contribute for boardroom discussions and policymaking. This study supported anecdotal literature promoting nurses for board leadership. DISCUSSION Nurses should be appointed to boards of directors based on their knowledge, skills, and perspectives about health care. Board leadership leverages the publics trust in nursing, advances the profession, and positions nurses to influence health care transformation. Further research is recommended.

After the “Great Recession”: Excluding “Able-Bodied” Adults from Food Entitlements in the United States

ABSTRACT A little-known provision to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), excluding those who are “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWDs) from accessing long-term benefits without conforming to work requirements or eligibility guidelines, was recently reinstated at federal and state levels. States have considerable discretion in implementing the ABAWD provision, resulting in differential access to SNAP benefits. This article provides an analysis of the historical and political context of the ABAWD provision and its relevance to social work. An examination of several states’ different approaches to implementing the ABAWD rule underscores the limits of this policy and the consequent need for social work engagement and advocacy.